Flush disk write cache

Question

When the policy for a disk in Windows XP and Vista is set to enable write caching on the hard disk, is there a way to flush a file that has just been written, and ensure tha

Answer 1

You should not fix this at the time you close the file. Windows will cache, unless you open the file passing FILE_FLAG_WRITE_THROUGH to CreateFile().

You may also want to pass FILE_FLAG_NO_BUFFERING; this tells Windows not to keep a copy of the bytes in cache.

This is more efficient than FlushFileBuffers(), according to the CreateFile documentation on MSDN.

See also file buffering and file caching on MSDN.